Saturday, October 28, 2017

It’s getting more and more clear that Microsoft will create a real “Microsoft Store” end to end. After change the store name from “Windows Store” to “Microsoft Store”, more than apps or games you’ll be able to buy almost everything from Microsoft, a new “trick” allows you to see what’s coming.

Just follow this quick and easy trick!

Open Run dialog box

Write down ms-windows-store://navigatetopage/?PageName=ShopSurface

And…take a look to all Surface Products you’ll be able to buy directly from Microsoft Store

This new paradigm of Windows as a Service (Waas) really makes SysAdmins to change the way they work and also adapt really really quick.

Following the release of Windows 10 v1709 (Fall Creators Update), and if like me you use a Powershell script to remove provisioned apps during image deployment or golden image creation, you’ll notice…a lot of broken things on you script.

This happens because of changes on the apps version…so…or you create a more complex script that just looks for the beginning of the application string or you adapt your script to this new release.

So…you try to install you golden image with Microsoft Deployment Toolkit (MDT) and you get the following error when finishing:

Now…don’t close this Window right yet. Instead, follow this steps:

Open a Powershell prompt

Execute the following command: Get-AppxPackage–Online > C:\Apps.txt

This will create a file called Apps.txt on you C: drive with all the installed/provisioned apps. It will be something similar to this:

Now you just need to copy/paste the updated “PackageName” to your script and everything works fine again.

Just a quick note to remember that for example Microsoft 3DBuilder app was removed from Windows 10 v1709 so you may completely remove that line from your script.

These spreadsheets list the policy settings for computer and user configurations that are included in the Administrative template files delivered with the Windows operating systems specified. You can configure these policy settings when you edit Group Policy Objects.

Now…for the ISOs that you download from VLSC or MSDN, you need to be aware on some changes.

Instead of separated media packages for each SKU (WIndows 10 Pro; Windows 10 Enterprise; Windows 10 Education), the Windows 10 v1709 that you download, will include in the ISO a single WIM file with all this version.

So, when using this ISO in tools such as Microsoft Deployment Toolkit (MDT) or Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM) make sure you select the appropriate image index in you task sequence.

Monday, October 16, 2017

It starts to be a common thing for an enterprise to give their users the possibility to have two browsers.One for their business applications and and alternative for all the other browsing and usually this means Google Chrome, that by the way, it’s getting stronger on giving better IT resources like GPOs to better control their browser on an enterprise environment.

It’s than important that SysAdmins have MSI files or offline installers so the deployment of Google Chrome gets smoother.

Thinking on this, Google has available a website for everything you need to correctly deploy and manage Google Chrome on you enterprise:

Saturday, October 14, 2017

For those that needed to get Windows Update log using powershell with the cmd-let “Get-WindowsUpdateLog” there was a really annoying issue to read this “compiled log”.

Basically what happened was that after you run the cmd-let, and you opened the log file you’ll noticed that the formatting was completely a mess typically because the symbols weren’t there. That was usually a temporary situation, waiting for the symbols to be uploaded to a server and indexed.

Well….but if, for example, you were troubleshooting a machine that need to be out of the network? Than you’ll never get the correct formatting for the log file unless you copied it to a connect machine.

Now, with Windows 10 Fall Creators Update (v1710) or if you’re a Windows Insider with at least v1709, this issue was completely “fixed".This means that running “Get-WindowsUpdateLog” you’ll automatically format the log file, without the need to have any network connection.

Here’s an example on how the log file looks with automatic formatting even without network:

One of the most “dramatic” changes with Windows 10, specially for an enterprise, is the new (not so new now) Windows as a Service (Waas) model.

This basically means that Windows 10 is now on a continuous development, where users get feature and quality updates in a nice and defined timeline.

Feature Updates are deployed 2 times per year and does a in-place upgrade to the machine installing new features on Windows 10.

Quality Updates are monthly and cumulative updates for Windows 10 with no new features. Just security updates; bug fixes; driver fixes; etc..

This new and continuous development presents a lot of new challenges for system administrators.One of this challenges is to keep up with everything that changes on the Feature Updates and what’s fixed on the monthly Quality Updates.There are a couple of things that should be done to anticipate issues and that’s have some users on the IT department as Windows Insiders so they can get the changes way before the corporate users.

Because there’s also a lot of information and things going on between this updates, it’s also important to have a centralized (well, in this case, various) points of information about the different releases and work in progress.

Here’s a list of important website to keep up-to-date with Windows 10 WaaS:

Addressed issue where some UWP and Centennial apps show a gray icon and display the error message "This app can't open" on launch.

Addressed reliability issue that causes the AppReadiness service to stop working.

Addressed issue where applications that use the Silverlight map stack stop working.

Addressed issue where VSync prevents devices from entering Panel Self Refresh mode, which can lead to reduced battery life.

Addressed issue where user customizations (like pinned tiles) made to an enforced partial Start layout are lost when upgrading to Windows 10 1703.

Addressed issue where the Universal CRT caused the linker (link.exe) to stop working for large projects.

Addressed issue that prevents Windows Error Reporting from saving error reports in a temporary folder that is recreated with incorrect permissions. Instead, the temporary folder is inadvertently deleted.

Addressed issue where the MSMQ performance counter (MSMQ Queue) may not populate queue instances when the server hosts a clustered MSMQ role.

Addressed issue with the token broker where it was leaking a token that caused sessions to remain allocated after logoff.

Addressed issue where Personal Identity Verification (PIV) smart card PINs are not cached on a per-application basis. This caused users to see the PIN prompt multiple times in a short time period; normally, the PIN prompt only displays once.

Addressed issue where using AppLocker to block a Modern app fails. This issue occurs only with Modern apps that come pre-installed with Windows.

Addressed issue with form submissions in Internet Explorer.

Addressed issue with the rendering of a graphics element in Internet Explorer.

Addressed issue that prevents an element from receiving focus in Internet Explorer.

Addressed issue with the docking and undocking of Internet Explorer windows.

Addressed issue caused by a pop-up window in Internet Explorer.

Addressed issue where a Vendor API deleted data unexpectedly.

Addressed issue where using the Robocopy utility to copy a SharePoint document library, which is mounted as a drive letter, fails to copy files. However, in this scenario, Robocopy will copy folders successfully.

Addressed issue where MDM USB restrictions did not disable the USB port as expected.

Addressed issue where creating an iSCSI session on a new OS installation may result in the "Initiator instance does not exist" error when attempting to connect to a target.

Addressed issue where connecting to RDS applications published using Azure App Proxy fails. The error message is, “Your computer can’t connect to the Remote Desktop Gateway server. Contact your network administrator for assistance”. The error can occur when the RDP cookie size limit is exceeded. This update increased the size of the RDP cookie limit.

Addressed issue where USBHUB.SYS randomly causes memory corruption that results in random system crashes that are extremely difficult to diagnose.

Addressed issue that affects the download of some games from the Microsoft Store during the pre-order phase. Download fails with the error code 0x80070005, and the device attempts to restart the download from the beginning.

Addressed issue where the ServerSecurityDescriptor registry value does not migrate when you upgrade to Windows 10 1703. As a result, users might not be able to add a printer using the Citrix Print Manager service. Additionally, they might not be able to print to a client redirected printer, a Citrix universal print driver, or a network printer driver using the Citrix universal print driver.